Hunter Gatherer
by PPM
Summary: Beast Boy has his own score to settle before he can show his face to Terra again. Epilogue up. This story is complete. Warning: Reviews contain spoilers.
1. Escape

Author's Note: This is, to avoid confusion, the first chapter of the sequel to Irresistible Lies.

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When the Titans had retired for the night, the city was safe and secure, just as they had worked so hard to make it. And even as dawn drew close, the city remained that way in all parts, save the roof of the Jump City Penitentiary, where one dark figure stood and a second crouched. They talked to each other as loudly as they deemed necessary, which to the first was a fairly low volume.

"I don't understand why I can't just bust in there myself," the decidedly male voice said to his companion. "It'd be a lot faster, and we don't have much time."

The second, though he was whispering, sounded like he could be screaming his response. "Because of the alarms, scuzzbrain!" He reached a short arm around his back and pressed something on an attached pack shaped like a disc, from which four spider-like arms extended. Each of the arms extended in front of him and arranged into the four corners of a square large enough to fit a female body through; just what he was intending to do. Simultaneously, the tips of the arms began spinning like drills and chipping away at the cement.

"This is going to take too long," the larger figure protested. "The sun's going to rise soon and the Titans'll be up."

"Yeah, Mammoth, so? Those scum-suckin' Titans can bite it, for all I care. 'Sides, you wanna be in there with her?" His question was answered by the ringing of Mammoth's H.I.V.E. communicator. "Get that. It's Jinx," he ordered, and Mammoth complied.

"You springing me sometime today, guys?" the voice of the sorceress came through the communicator.

"Yeah, hold on. Gizmo's drilling in right now," Mammoth said.

Knowing that her friends could not see her, Jinx rolled her eyes in her cell, then felt something fall into her forked hair. When she reached up to brush it off, she saw that it was gravel, and looked up to find four drill bits poking through the ceiling. "You're in, Giz," she said into her communicator. "Now stand back; I'm gonna blast it." She saw the bits retract and readied her hex.

A prisoner in a nearby cell watched a concentrated wave of pink energy fly from her hands to the ceiling and the subsequent rain of stone, and remembered when he had been on the receiving end of that magic, though indirectly. He watched when two others, the names of whom he did not know, dropped down from the hole (that, from what he could hear, was now much larger than what they had planned) and landed in Jinx's cell. When he saw that they appeared to be freeing her, he pounded on the glass panel in the door of his specially made cell to get the attention of one of them.

It worked. Jinx turned her head to the noise and saw a familiar green face behind the sheen of the glass. Gizmo and Mammoth both noticed her staring before they noticed the noise, but they were paying more attention to getting her out than they were anything else.

"Who's that snotbag?" Gizmo sneered towards the window.

"I think he's with the Teen Titans," Jinx started. "I remember fighting him a couple weeks ago. He put me in here."

"Why does he think we'll help him, then?" Mammoth asked.

"Heck if I know. Some crudmunchers'll do anything to get out of jail."

"But he did something to get into jail, too," the sorceress said, then continued with a tone of voice that said she had an idea. "And I've seen what he can do. If he's in here, that means he's not with the Titans any more. He could help us instead."

"Are you crazy?" Gizmo almost screamed. "We get him and the guards'll get us for sure!"

"Then you'll just have to make it quick," she shot back. "We could use a new recruit. The Headmaster isn't helping us with finding any new people, so we gotta do it ourselves. And I say this guy's the prime choice."

"But what if he's not?" Mammoth doubted her line of logic.

"Then he'll be an outcast. The Titans obviously don't want him back if he's here, and it's not like there's another do-gooder team in the city." Her words appeared to have won over Mammoth, but the final member of the team still had concerns.

"How are we even gonna get in that pit-sniffin' cell? It's alarmed into next week!"

Jinx just smiled. "I heard how they keep him in there. He can turn into any animal he wants to, so the bottom edge of the door is lined with pesticide. He can pretty much trash any locking mechanism he wants, so they don't even bother, but if the door opens more than an inch without proper authorization, every alarm in the building goes off."

Gizmo stared blankly before he tried to apply his brand of logic – _actual _logic – to the situation. "So what are we gonna do? The cludgehead can't get out without being an ant, and he'll die if he does that. He's stuck!"

"No, he's not," Mammoth said, having figured out what Jinx had planned. He picked up Gizmo by one of the arms coming from his back and, ignoring his protests, brought him to Jinx's cell door. "Reach through the bars and push open the door from the bottom just enough so he can get through."

"How's the scrum-buffer gonna do that? He'd have to be a bug!"

Again the sorceress rolled her eyes. "Gizmo, he can turn into _any_ animal. Rats can collapse their bodies to get through tight spaces." The other two looked at her and blinked. She sighed. "Am I the _only_ one who pays attention in class? Look, just do it, Gizmo."

He muttered something under his breath that sounded very inappropriate and one of the arms from his pack extended out. It bent forward and went through the gaps between the bars of Jinx's cell, which the prisoner knew she could not have destroyed on her own from practice, then took a sharp right and pointed itself downward. Running along the floor, the appendage eventually reached the cell that contained Beast Boy and jammed itself underneath the door. The arm was not meant to do so much work, as evident by the strain on Gizmo's face, but with one final grunt from its master, the tip of the arm split and pushed the door open about three-quarters of an inch; well within the limits Jinx specified.

Beast Boy, seeing his opportunity and having heard Jinx's plan, turned his body into a common rat and pressed his nose against the door to make sure that there was only pesticide there and not rat poison as well. Detecting no danger, he pushed his snout, then his head, then the rest of his body through the all-too-tight opening. His tail was barely out before Gizmo's system gave up and the arm retracted back into the pack. The green rat waddled into Jinx's cell and transformed back into a green boy.

"Remind me never to do that again," Beast Boy said wearily while feeling his stomach to make sure all his organs were still there. He was about to ask why they had actually freed him, but Gizmo butted in.

"All right, pit-sniffers! We spent too much time here already. We gotta get out, or we'll all be stuck here!"

For once, Jinx was glad to listen to what Gizmo had to say, because he raised a good point. She led the four underneath the hole in the ceiling, then climbed into Mammoth's arms to have him throw her to the roof. The kid genius pressed a button on the side of the pack and flew up to safety via his newly-formed jetpack. Beast Boy transformed into a massive gorilla and picked Mammoth up off the ground, then flung him upwards; he knew the super-strong teenager landed safely when the impact caused some more gravel to shake loose. Finally, Beast Boy changed again to a crow and flew through the hole, leaving the cell empty and the guards clueless.

-HG-

The four had relocated to an alleyway a decent enough distance from the jail so as not to be caught by any patrolling officers. Jinx broke the relative silence of the night by starting a conversation with the changeling.

"So what did you do to get in there?"

He surprised her when he refused to tell her specifically, instead saying, "Something I'm not proud of. At all. But not something I wouldn't do again."

"Not a bad answer, kid," Jinx said after appearing to think for only a second. "You might be H.I.V.E. material after all."

"'Hive'? What's 'Hive'?" he asked her, but cut her off before she could even start. "Forget it. I'm not looking to join anybody."

Mammoth, who had not had the opportunity to get a closer look at the H.I.V.E. pledge, now saw the orange-and-black "S" logo emblazoned on the front of the green kid's leotard. "Clearly. You're already with Slade." Jinx gave a sharp gasp, and Beast Boy a sharper one.

"I'm not with Slade!" He looked down at his uniform. "Okay, I know what it looks like, but I'm not with him."

"'Cause you screwed up, crud-muncher!" Gizmo mocked. "He wouldn't want your sorry butt back anyway!"

"Great," Beast Boy said, almost happily, "because I don't want him either!" He put one hand on his chest and tore the emblem clean off the leotard, leaving a gaping hole in his costume and exposing part of his bare green chest. He threw the symbol of his former life – one of them, anyway – out of the alleyway and into the street, where he could only hope a car would run over it.

Jinx was growing suspicious. "So if you're not with Slade, then…"

"I'm not still with the Titans, either," Beast Boy was quick to correct. The last thing he wanted right now was a fight. "I'm not with Slade. I'm not with the Titans. I'm not with anybody, and I don't want to be with you three."

"Do you have any idea what we could give you if you were part of us, kid?" Jinx asked, but that only fueled his temper.

"I'm sick of offers! I don't care what you can give me! I don't care what anyone can give me! I'm not a criminal!" He screamed the whole way through, only getting louder with each sentence. His parting words were more subdued, but it was the suppressed emotion behind them that struck the H.I.V.E. far more powerfully than the screaming. "Thanks for getting me out, but now I have my own things to do." With that, he turned his back on Jinx, Gizmo, and Mammoth, transformed into a crow again, and took off, out of the alleyway and towards a location he knew very well in his mind.

Gizmo almost took off after him, but Mammoth grabbed one of his legs and kept him on the ground. "Hey, scuzzhead! Let me go!"

"Gizmo, calm down. Let him go. He's not our problem any more." Jinx said it as if she knew the future. "He's not going to bother us."

-HG-

"_I'm not the bad guy. I'm not the criminal,"_ Beast Boy's thoughts ran through his mind, all about what he had just practically shouted to all of Jump City. At least, all of Jump City who were awake at five in the morning. _"Why can I tell that to them, but I can't tell that to **them**? They're going to think I'm just another freak until the day they die."_ He was reluctant even to focus on what was going on with them. They always accepted him, up until the day he had…the accident. After that, they acted like he was not even around. _"I'm not a freak," _he told himself. If they could see what he had done with his powers…why, he had kept a major city safe!

"_Not really, but they don't have to know that,"_ he joked with himself to cut the tension in his own head. _"But they do have to know this. They do have to know what I'm doing now." _His goal was clear in his mind, and he knew just what he had to do.

However, his goal could not begin just yet. He had one more loose end to tie up, and so he just let himself be lost in the bliss of flight that somehow never got old, just to be away from his thoughts, until he arrived at his last stop in the city.

-HG-

Even in the slowly-fading darkness he could make out the exterior of Terra's room from the rest of the Tower. It was, curiously, the only room with the window open. _"Was she expecting me?"_ he wondered to himself as he dove to fly in.

His entry was smooth, even though he got slightly tangled in the drawn curtain when he transformed back to a human, and he was not disappointed to find Terra fast asleep in her bed. It would have been much harder to do this if she were awake. Recalling from the first night he had stayed here, he knew that he was allowed to use her computer which, he discovered, was still on.

"_It's like she went to bed without caring about anything else."_

Sitting down on the edge of the semicircular couch, he moved his fingers warily over the touchpad, hoping that that would act as a mouse and, upon finding that it did, found a word processing program and opened it. He had had to work with the program before, for schoolwork and the like, so he knew his way around. His fingers moved across the keys quickly and not very accurately, but he knew the program would correct his spelling anyway, and came up with a three-line note:

_Terra,_

_We _are _friends, and we always will be. And now, I'll be the one looking for you._

_Beast Boy_

The cursor flashed at the end of the last line, and he debated whether or not that was the best way to end the note. If he meant to go back into his own past, he reasoned, then he should use the name he used in the past; however, he worried whether she would understand.

He hit backspace several times and replaced his false name with _Garfield_. "She'll get it," he said softly to himself as he clicked the icon to print the note. The machine underneath the desk was too loud for his liking, but Terra proved to be a deeper sleeper than he thought; she stayed calm through the noisy printing process, until in the end Beast Boy had the typed note in his hands and the sun was only beginning to peek over the horizon.

"_I can wait here a bit longer."_ He smiled at Terra's sleeping figure, then took the note in his mouth and changed shape into a crow, so that he was now holding his note to Terra in his beak. As quietly as he could, he flapped himself airborne and perched on the curtain rod in front of the window. Until the sun rose fully, he remained there, watching Terra sleep and forgetting about the troubling thoughts he had also wanted to avoid the last time he was a bird.

Eventually, though, the sun did rise, and so did the girl. When Beast Boy saw her get up, he dropped the note, which got caught in the folds of the curtain, and flew out the open window with his new destination clear in mind. _"It's gonna be a long trip," _he thought.

The silhouette of the crow flying into the sun was nearly invisible to Terra as she closed her window, but the sentiment to be found soon after was not.


	2. Family Matters

It had been a long trip, indeed; not especially in time (as it had only taken him three days), but definitely in distance. Steel City was farther from Jump City than Beast Boy remembered ever traveling, even on his way there. As a cheetah, he had run for most of the day to get as far as he could, even giving up two hours of sleep each day to keep running. It had also been difficult for him to keep his arduous journey up: He had allowed himself ten minutes of rest between each mile, but after several sprints at nearly seventy miles per hour, even the ten minutes he had given himself had felt not enough for his body. 

Even as he looked on at Steel City from the outskirts, his goal so close, the exhaustion pounded in his heart and cut into and through his muscles. He would have liked nothing more than to just fall in the ground there, curl up, and sleep until the next day. Fortunately for him, his body made that decision for him; his four knees gave way and buckled, sending his cheetah form to the very cold and very wet ground. His eyelids closed, blocking the glimmering lights of the city at night from him.

And immediately opened again as soon as he realized just what he was lying on. _"Snow?"_ He had not seen snow since he left his home a year ago; it had been far too warm for it to fall. _"If it snowed, then that means it's winter," _Beast Boy thought after transforming back into a human and pulling his face out of the snow. _"And if it's winter,"_ and excitement was building in him. He pushed himself to his feet and completed the thought, _"then my parents'll be at home!"_ He took one renewed step towards the city.

And found himself back on the ground. His knees had buckled again; apparently his body still thought it would be the best idea to rest. It was far from him to defy the pain in his system a second time, though, and, transforming into a small wolf cub, curled up on the ground and resolved to spend the night.

-HG-

Sirens woke Beast Boy suddenly the next morning, but he recalled with a yawn that crime was a common problem in Steel City, which was the primary reason he began masquerading as Beast Boy in the first place, and paid the police little attention, though they did succeed in getting him off the ground. He rubbed his eyes from the sun's glare off the snow and, fully rested by now, trudged forward through the snow and into the city.

He pictured his destination clearly in his mind and despite being away for a year still remembered the address, which was his only thought, repeating endlessly: _"800 East Fifth Street. 800 East Fifth Street."_ He barely noticed that the sirens were growing louder the closer he drew to that address, the address of his first house and his first home. And before he even realized it, he was there.

The white-trimmed, pale-brown house looked almost exactly the way he had left it, the only difference he noticed being a shattered window that at first glance he attributed to a local punk kid looking to cause some trouble. However, that was all he got to notice about the house before he noticed the pavement in front of the house and the six police cars surrounding it. The sirens were turned off by now, but the lights on all of the cars flashed red and blue across Beast Boy's disbelieving face. He ran up to an officer who was unrolling yellow police tape across the front of the scene and asked him, "What happened?"

Without looking back, the officer replied, "It looks like the work of the Brotherhood again. This house was broken into and the two people inside were found dead."

Beast Boy's jaw dropped. Soon he could no longer look at his house or anything around it clearly; the tears welling up blocked his sight. His parents were…killed. Murdered. Just after he had resolved to make things right with them, they were…gone. And he would never be able to tell them all the things he found to say while he was gone. And unlike him, they would never come back.

His voice had almost left him, but he still managed to eke out, "When?"

The officer said simply, "Last night."

Last night…last night, he had been just outside the city. He could have stopped it! He could have saved them! If only he had not decided to rest, he could have been in his old room with his parents safely nearby. That was the second reason he started crime fighting – to keep his parents safe. And he had failed at that, too! It was his fault that his parents were dead. Completely his fault. He had rushed to get home in time, and he still had not gotten home in time. He fell to his knees, trembling.

"…_Hold it."_ Some part of rational thought still existed in his brain, though hidden under the anguish, the tears that he would not have wanted to hold back even if he could. And that one bit of rational thought saved him from breaking down completely.

"_It's **not** your fault. You got here as quickly as you could. You were sprung from jail as soon as you had the opportunity, then you said goodbye and made your way here. You pushed your body to its limit and past it, and even then you didn't stop. There was nothing you could have done to stop this. You were already weakened; who's to say if you did try to stop it, you would still be alive right now?"_

And for once, he was glad to hear that he had been weak, because the rational part of his brain was right. Of course, it was not for the best that he was too weak to have fought, but at least it meant that he could still exact revenge on…what had the officer said? The Brotherhood?

His voice still weak and trembling, he asked, "Who is the 'Brotherhood'?" He had every intent of hunting them down and avenging his parents for what had happened.

"Where have you been, kid? The Brotherhood of Evil is Steel City's biggest threat right now, and they have been for months. Almost around when Beast Boy left," the officer said, then walked off, all without looking at him.

"_They started when the city was defenseless," _Beast Boy realized. _"That means… That means I really **was** keeping the city safe!"_ He had always thought that Steel City just never was important enough for a major supervillain group, but with the news of the Brotherhood of Evil's formation, he now knew that his superheroic patrols of the city had been keeping the entire city safe. The boost to his self-esteem was enough to bring him completely over the guilt he felt about his parents, and only made him more determined to stop the Brotherhood. He walked with a strong stride over to another police officer and, streaks still on his face from the tears, asked, "Where can I find the Brotherhood?"

This officer paid attention to the boy and looked him straight in the eye, though she did not appear to recognize him. "Why would you _want_ to—oh," she deduced from Beast Boy's face and the situation. "Kid, don't go looking for the Brotherhood," she warned.

"But I have to," Beast Boy responded insistently and firmly.

"Don't go looking for them," she repeated, "because kid, _they'll_ find _you_."

As soon as she said that, a senior officer walked up next to her and told her just to whom she was talking. "Adams, what are you doing? That's _Beast Boy_." And it hit him at the same time, like he did not even realize that yes, Beast Boy had returned. "That's Beast Boy…Beast Boy's back!" he shouted happily, as if all their problems were now solved. "Beast Boy's back!" The shouting drew the other officers to him, none of whom could believe their own eyes.

"Beast Boy! It's really him!"

"Where was he?"

"Why did he come back?"

The questions kept coming, but Beast Boy did not want to answer any of them. He instead asked the senior officer who had drawn the crowd the same question. "Where can I find the Brotherhood?"

"They've taken over a shipping station at the pier, on the other side of the city. Nobody's set foot near there since they moved in. But Beast Boy, I warn you," the officer added, his voice suddenly very serious, "they're tougher than you think. We haven't been able to stop them, even when they were just a fledgling group."

But Beast Boy had not paid the officer much attention once he knew where the Brotherhood of Evil's headquarters were. Without even a "goodbye" or a "thank you", he turned into a crow and took off for the pier.

-HG-

It had taken him the longest twenty minutes of his life to fly from one end of the city to the other, but once he landed on the old wooden planks of the pier he knew his vengeance would come soon. He had not taken ten steps before stepping in a small puddle of vaguely purple ooze, which seemed to do no harm to him other than severely grossing him out. He continued walking down the pier, looking for the largest and most obvious building, because if he had learned anything from past experiences it was that many powerful people took no delight in remaining well hidden once their power was known.

Just three warehouses short of the end of the pier, he knew he had found the right place. It was the largest building on the pier, to be sure, and though it was not particularly obvious, it did look very well kept for something that was supposed to be a worn-down and untouched area of the city. He shoved open one of the double doors in front of him and stormed in, only as a human because his battle forms would not have fit through the door.

The first sight he was met with was a woman in a blue, skintight uniform with a fishnet mesh on her arms and legs; in her hand she held a rapier ready. His eyes only stayed on that woman for a very brief period compared with the second thing he saw. On the far wall of the building, Terra was chained and unable to move, though she struggled, and approaching her quickly was a sliding wall of concrete set to crush her easily. He saw it press up against her and heard her scream of pure agony, and then he saw the two walls meet. His mouth screamed her name, but no sound came out, and his legs tried to run to her, but they did not move. The woman in blue laughed at him.

"Welcome back, Beast Boy."


	3. Love Thy Brotherhood

"Te—!" Beast Boy's voice broke halfway through screaming the name of his newly lost maiden. She had been killed before his eyes – crushed underneath her own element with no ability to stop it. First his parents, then Terra, all within a half hour…his mind could barely handle the strain. His face twisted in pain, he doubled over, closed his eyes, and pressed his hands against his ears to try to block out the steady, sadistic laughter from the woman in blue in front of him. He wanted to cry, but the tears would not come; they were blocked by the shock and the stress. Through his hands, he heard a second female voice, higher than the first, join in the laughter, then the first woman stopped and said something indistinguishable to him.

"Wonderful. How did you know zat would work, Phobia?" the woman in blue asked.

"Plasmus really is an excellent spy," the second woman, clad in a green, black, and very spiky robe, replied. She saw a vaguely purplish goop ooze its way into the room from the corner of her eye and without looking away from Beast Boy, thanked it. "You never cease to amaze me, Plasmus."

The woman in blue looked at the slime, now in a humanoid form, and asked it, "Did you get ze sample to Houngan?" The physically hollow features of Plasmus's head moved up and down, though he himself did not actually nod. "Excellent. Now, Plasmus," and she jerked her head towards Beast Boy. "Detain 'im."

The slime did as he was told; his form slumped into a puddle and he slid across the wooden floor of the warehouse, then reformed behind Beast Boy and bound the teen hero with his malleable arms. Still in complete shock and terror, Beast Boy did nothing to stop it.

The woman who seemed to be in charge of the whole situation shot a quick glance into the shadow of several stacked boxes to Plasmus's right. "If you will, Monsieur," she requested, then walked off with the one she called Phobia towards a door in the back wall of the warehouse.

An ape of formidable size, though not much larger than the standard gorilla, emerged from his hiding place and approached Beast Boy, who was still willingly blind and deaf. "I am sorry to have to do this," the ape spoke quite eloquently, though he assumed Beast Boy could not hear him, and raised a fist to the back of the teen's head, then knocked him out cold.

-HG-

Beast Boy was slumped against the wall in a sectioned-off area of a large room, far too large for the warehouse to contain. He was actually underneath the warehouse, in the true lair of the Brotherhood of Evil, not just the warehouse forefront. Though he was unconscious, five people were very much aware and holding a conversation nearby, just behind a glass wall.

"Who was zat, anyway?" a female voice asked.

"His mind said it was a girl named Terra, and apparently he loved her," a second one, belonging to the green-clad woman, said. "He left her – and the other Teen Titans – to work for someone named Slade, but she got him to revert to his old ways."

"_Ze_ Teen Titans? Is zat where he's been?"

"Oh?" the male voice of an ape commented. "It sounds like a horrible romance novel."

"Yes, well, these things often are, Mallah," Phobia said, amused. "Teen love and all that."

"That gives me an idea," a second male voice joined in. "Madame Rouge…"

"Already zere, Houngan," the first female voice, belonging to the woman in blue called Madame Rouge, said. She pressed open a door in the glass wall to enter Beast Boy's cell and began changing her entire body. Her fully adult stature shrunk by about two feet to more closely match the height of Beast Boy; what once were well-developed limbs thinned into arms and legs that were almost ropes. The jet-black hair that once adorned her head lightened in a second to bright blond and lengthened itself to the point that Rouge remembered from Phobia's illusion, and her distinctly black and narrow eyes grew wide, kind, and very blue. Her mouth, nose, eyebrows, and every other discernible feature metamorphosed from hers to the earth maiden's. Even her blue clothing changed with her into the black T-shirt and beige cargo shorts she had recalled seeing. She felt her vocal chords tighten to make her voice higher, to complete the illusion, and there was a distinctly odd feeling in her mouth and throat as she lost her French accent. The only thing that would have distinguished her from the original Terra at that point was a slightly more ample bosom, which she had intentionally left different from her memory so as to fit in with her plan.

The completely transformed woman – girl, now – looked back at the other four and said through the glass in Terra's voice, "Get out of sight. And Houngan, wake him up." When she saw that the four had gotten out of her field of vision, she turned towards Beast Boy and waited for Houngan to do his job.

The voodoo master Houngan pulled a small doll and a stylus from two pouches along his waist. Thanks to Plasmus's intervention and DNA collection on the pier, the doll looked exactly like a miniature replica of Beast Boy. Houngan tapped the top of the doll's head with the stylus, which he knew (as he had created the entire system) would deliver the same result to the actual Beast Boy.

-HG-

Something hit Beast Boy fairly hard on the head, and in his wooziness he did not consider looking for what had done it. Whatever it was, it had succeeded in waking him up. He looked up voluntarily for the first time in…how long had he been out, anyway? The last thing he remembered was…was Terra.

"Good morning, Beast Boy," a familiar voice said.

His head jerked up upon hearing it. It was Terra's voice! But…she had died; he had seen it. It just wasn't possible! And yet, there she was, standing in front of him, in the flesh. A bit more flesh than he had remembered, but he was in no state for bringing the matter up. "Terra! You're…alive! But how?"

"I never died, Beast Boy," she said with a laugh as she knelt down to his level. "I asked Robin to track down the enemies in Steel City," Rouge lied boldly, assuming that Beast Boy would have told the Titans about his hometown, "and he came up with the Brotherhood of Evil. One of them is named Phobia, and she can make your greatest fears come alive."

"So when I saw you die," Beast Boy started.

Madame Rouge finished, "It was Phobia. I'm perfectly safe. And now, so are you." Her voice was a comforting purr as she reassured him. "Robin and the others came with me, and they stopped the Brotherhood. He thought you couldn't handle them yourself, but I knew you could." She smiled with a hint of regret. "I guess I was wrong, but that wasn't your fault." And the regret was gone, and now her smile was pure and sweet, just like the original Terra's would have been in this situation. "But that doesn't matter. What matters is we're both safe now."

She lunged forward and wrapped her arms around him, and he suddenly found himself with newfound strength and did the same. Then, without warning, she brought her face closer and pressed her lips against his in the most passionate fake kiss she had ever given. Beast Boy's eyes widened at the start of the action, but he quickly accepted it and never resisted for a minute. Seeing that he was not resisting, Madame Rouge as Terra attempted to take it another step: She pushed her tongue out of her mouth and at Beast Boy's closed lips, only stopping to see if he would accept it even though she already knew he would, and let her tongue play in his mouth in an attempt to make him the happiest he had ever been.

Beast Boy, however, was hesitant; he had never tried anything like that before. He was surprised beyond his eyes widening when he felt her tongue against his lips, but again did not prevent it from happening and gave her free passage. Even though he knew she was beckoning him to do the same, something seemed off. Terra had never been this impulsive before, though she had never made it a secret that she liked him. He looked into her eyes as pure and clear as her smile and knew, though, that this had to be the real Terra, even if she were being more straightforward than she normally was. Cautiously, he accepted her offer and pushed his tongue into her mouth, as well.

When their tongues met and began playing with each other – Terra's more than Beast Boy's – the boy's heart rate increased and his body was overcome with pleasure. He had never known that something so simple ever could have felt so good, and especially to share it with the person he knew he loved. If it were up to him, he would have stayed there with Terra for eternity, but eventually she pulled away and let Beast Boy come up for air.

"Terra…that was amazing," was all he could say, smiling from pointed ear to pointed ear. "I really missed you." His tone of voice implied _Thank you_ and also a sense of wanting more than the moment they had just shared to let each other know how they felt.

Rouge picked up on his tone of voice – as an actress by nature, she had been trained to recognize inflection of every type – and gave a naughty grin. "It doesn't have to stop there, you know," she said, looking down at her own chest. Unfortunately for her plan, that seemed to have struck the wrong chord with Beast Boy.

"Yeah, it does," he said, raising an eyebrow. "Terra, what's gotten into you? We can't be doing that. We're teenagers!"

Her naughty grin turned absolutely evil at the mention of their age. "Actually, I'm not, Beast Boy." To his very, very confused look, she began slowly transforming back. First her hair changed colour from blonde back to black. "You know, it's true what they say," she said as her limbs filled out and her eyes grew narrower. "What's the use in physical damage," her face returned to its original form, her vocal chords loosened, and her accent returned, "when psychological scarring is so much more permanent?" The last thing to change was her clothing, finally returning to the blue fishnet ensemble and completing her change to her original form. "Don't you agree, Beast Boy?"

He was dumbstruck for the second time that day. Terra was not dead, but that…that _woman_ was not Terra. He had just been manipulated into kissing someone masquerading as his best friend. And what was worse: He had gone along with it; he had bought every last action as authentic. He had actually thought it was Terra.

The last time something like that had happened, he had doubled over and tried to block it all out. This time, he knew that he had to do something. The happiness that was only recently inside him had completely changed to anger, to hatred – at this impostor, and at himself. It filled him completely, and when it reached the point of overflowing, he knew exactly what he had to do.

He climbed to his feet, adrenaline coursing through him, and hissed, "You…you _bitch_!" With a roar so loud the glass wall actually vibrated in its casing, he transformed into a creature more deadly than even he knew he was capable of being: A savage, now-bloodthirsty half-beast capable of standing on two feet, delivering powerful blows with both its hands and feet, and gnashing and tearing with its horrible fangs, all of which he intended to show the woman in blue personally.

He pounced.

---

Author's Note: This was definitely a fun chapter to write, as it was not only my first serious romantic scene, but a wonderful opportunity to show the hateful side of this universe's Beast Boy.


	4. Retribution

He pounced right on top of Madame Rouge and bared his deadly claws and more-than-formidable fangs, making sure she had a good look at what he could offer her if she just cooperated with him. With her pinned under him, he just remained there for what seemed like hours, seething and panting with rage, hot saliva dribbling from his jaws down to his soon-to-be victim's skin and clothing. When it looked like he would not strike; when it looked almost safe for Madame Rouge…that was when he slammed down one powerful arm, claws extended, into the ground, where Rouge's head would have been had she not moved her head in the nick of time. His claws instead dug into the stone floor of his cell and became stuck there. With an absolutely furious snarl, he swiped his other claw across what he had hoped would have been Rouge's face, but she had been able to work her way free somewhat and he instead slashed her chest region deeply, letting blood stain her blue clothing purple. 

In a panicked and desperate state, Madame Rouge screamed through the glass, "Houngan! Use ze doll!" The confusion of that statement made Beast Boy stop for a few precious seconds and allowed her to escape his grip. When he saw that she had, though, he sprung to his feet and rushed towards her with such force that her bleeding body pounded against the glass wall and left marks. He retracted his claws on one of his hands and clenched it into a fist, pulled back his arm…

And convulsed in pain. It felt as though someone were jabbing him too sharply with barbed swords in his arms, his legs, his face, and every pressure point on his body. He pulled his body back and let Madame Rouge slump to the floor, then barely noticed her scrabble out for the pain searing his body, almost rending him in two. And it only grew worse and more unbearable as it went on. He arched his back and howled at the ceiling in a plea to make it all end, but that drew no mercy from whatever was causing it. What had once felt like swords now could have been flaming bars of iron, almost burning him to the bone. His howl grew louder and louder, and the plea grew more and more obvious, but still no help came; no sweet release was given. Every part of his body screamed and burned, and no relief ever came.

The only time the pain actually stopped was when he passed out, face-down on the cold stone and unwillingly a human again. His body still twitched occasionally, remainders of the ordeal he had just gone through, though he eventually fell completely still, breathing jaggedly but very much unconscious. It was then that Houngan, Plasmus, Monsieur Mallah, and Phobia came out of where they had been hiding to tend to Madame Rouge.

"If we get here to the medical ward," the large gorilla said, "then Houngan should be able to heal her, correct?"

"Yes, Mallah, I can," came a reply from the man holding a miniature Beast Boy doll and wearing a crown of feathers on his head. "But we'll have to do it quickly; she can't hold on much longer."

"She is losing a lot of blood," Phobia noted even though it was quite obvious from the very large purple stains on the chest of her uniform. "Plasmus, can you stay here and make sure the little boy doesn't try anything?"

"_Ja_! I do it _mit_ pleasure, Phobia!" the humanoid blob of goo said in an all-too-thick German accent that nearly rendered his speech unintelligible.

Madame Rouge, barely supporting herself with one hand pressed against the wall, coughed with her free hand before saying, "We do not mean _'arm_ 'im, Plasmus. Just watch 'im until we get back." The man nodded in acknowledgement. "Brotherhood, zis is clearly a more dangerous situation than we thought." She disregarded an accusatory stare from Phobia, but could not block out her telepathic message, reminding Rouge that it was her idea in the first place to go after Beast Boy. "Houngan, heal me. Then we will discuss what to do next."

-HG-

"You say he's a bigger threat than we thought," Phobia said to Madame Rouge at her bedside, "but how? He is nothing we can't handle ourselves, together."

Rouge's chest was now no longer bleeding, but her clothing was still slashed from her fight. Lying prone on the bed, the tears in her blue almost-bustier opened and closed every time her chest rose and fell; Houngan looked her in the face as he talked to her, trying his best not to focus on her exposed flesh. "That's the problem: he _literally_ can be a bigger threat. If he wanted to, he could crush us under himself."

"But you can use ze doll to stop him from doing that beforehand, no?" Rouge asked, very aware and slightly disappointed that he was trying not to look at where her clothing had been shredded.

"No, Madame, I can't," Houngan confessed, and he saw her face twist into shock and surprise. "The sample will only work with him. If he transforms into a full animal, his DNA changes. I would need a sample from every one of his forms to have the doll work perfectly against him." The gorilla standing to his left, looking ready to contradict him, raised a finger, but Houngan ignored him and continued. "The only reason I was able to use the doll to save you was because he was still half-human and his DNA was still there." Monsieur Mallah looked satisfied with that explanation and lowered his protesting finger.

"So what do you propose we do, then, Madame?" Phobia asked her leader.

"I don't know. We could try to keep 'im a human as much as possible, but how well zat will work, I do not know," Rouge said. "As Houngan said, he could crush us if he wanted to; holding 'im down or anything like zat will not work for very long." She sighed and her chest heaved sharply. "Phobia, you have already done all you can," and with a nod towards Monsieur Mallah and Houngan, she added, "you two have, as well. It is my fault; I thought I could defeat 'im easily, but we have used everything we have."

"What if we pretend that we're no longer a threat?" Phobia suggested, but Rouge shook her head as if to say _I already tried zat_, and a frown fell over the face of the woman in green.

"Wait," Mallah said suddenly. "Does he know what you can do, Phobia? Does he know it was you who showed him this…'Terra' person being crushed?"

"Not to my knowledge, Mallah, but we can't use Terra against him any more. He's wise to it."

"Listen, though. We do not have to limit it to Terra. Surely he must have developed his own relationships with the other Teen Titans when he spent time with them." Monsieur Mallah left his idea incomplete, hoping that the others would pick up on it. Madame Rouge nodded as best she could after a few seconds of considering it, and Houngan and Phobia caught on soon after.

"It will be difficult for me to maintain it for that long, you know," Phobia reminded the gorilla.

"With luck, you will not have to hold it for that long. With luck, his own insecurities will get rid of him for us."

-HG-

"What do you _mean_, they only just noticed a jailbreak?"

On the other side of the country in a large T-shaped tower, the Boy Wonder was fuming over what he had just discovered on Good Morning Jump City, the local morning news program.

"They mean they only just noticed a jailbreak," Raven responded to him, very miffed that he was being so loud this early in the morning, and sipped her morning herbal tea.

"Not like it's new, man," Cyborg reminded as he pulled two waffles out of the toaster for Terra, who had not shown up yet but would soon enough, with Robin's yelling. "The police here aren't the best, if you haven't noticed. That's why we're here!"

"I thought we were here because this is where we live?" Starfire asked, misinterpreting Cyborg not for the first time.

"Uh, nevermind, Star."

The door slid open and Terra walked in, stretching one arm and rubbing an eye sleepily with the other. "Hey, guys." Stretching her other arm out, she yawned. "What's with all the noise?" She walked further into the room and graciously accepted a plate of waffles from Cyborg while she waited for her answer.

"The police just noticed today that two people broke out of Jump City Penitentiary _four days ago_," Robin lamented while walking over to the kitchen looking for a blend of tea that Raven had introduced him to recently. It was something to calm the nerves, she had said, and he needed the calm right now. No use starting the day angry and tense over the stupidity of the city's paid officials.

"Yeah, and?" Terra said through bites of waffles. "Not like it's new."

"Been there, Terra," Cyborg said to her in a low voice.

She swallowed heavily and started work on her second waffle. "Anyone know who they were?" She of course knew who one of them was; she kept his note with her at all times, hoping that he would come back soon.

"They haven't announced names yet, and it'd surprise me if they did. They don't want the citizens in an uproar or anything." His search having failed him, Robin settled for a cup of orange juice and walked out of the kitchen to get a better view of the television.

"Yeah, because the Teen Titans can't handle it," Raven shot back with trademark sarcasm, only a little happier that Robin had at least stopped yelling. "We put everyone who could have broken out in there in the first place."

Robin stopped paying attention to Raven and failed to catch her cutting remark, though, when the anchorman for Good Morning Jump City appeared on the screen again with the graphic of the corresponding story to his left. His dull voice gradually filled the room as Robin turned up the volume, eager not to miss any of the story.

"Good morning, I'm Walter Barbras, and this is Good Morning Jump City. We have for you breaking news on the jailbreak story: Two captives escaped four days ago from Jump City Penitentiary and are presumed still at large. The first is confirmed as a student of the prestigious training school the H.I.V.E. and is known only as Jinx." At that a picture of the pink-haired sorceress replaced the story graphic to the anchor's left. "She is known to have advanced psychokinetic powers and the ability to hex anything she comes across. She is confirmed to still be within Jump City's limits, so if any citizens see her, do not hesitate to call the Teen Titans.

"The second fugitive is already confirmed as having left the city, as there have been no reports of his appearance, and trust me, folks, you would notice him." The anchor laughed in a very obviously fake manner as the second fugitive's picture appeared to his left. "He is Steel City native and former Teen Titan, Beast Boy, real name Garfield Logan."

The anchor droned on, but Robin paid him no further attention, muting the television so he could be heard. "Beast Boy's escaped!" he shouted, but from the shocked looks on Cyborg's, Raven's, and Starfire's faces, he judged that they had heard. The only person who looked out of place was Terra, who had not stopped eating her breakfast when the announcement was made and now was being singled out. "Do you know anything about this, Terra?" Robin asked in a tone that was not intentionally accusatory.

"Me? No," she said after swallowing the last bit of waffle. "What, do you think I went there in the middle of the night and freed him myself?" Robin said nothing, but it was clear that that was one of his suspicions. "You're crazy! Come on," she protested. "I liked him, yeah, but that doesn't mean I got him out. I was sleeping when that happened." The Boy Wonder still did not look satisfied. "Oh, wow. You seriously think I did this. What's the matter, Robin? Don't you trust me?"

Robin opened his mouth to say something, but Cyborg cut him off. "Relax, Robin. If Terra says she didn't do it, then I fully believe her. Besides, she's been with us from the start. She knows not to let personal lives interfere with work," and with the last sentence his voice suggested very strongly Robin's relationship with Starfire; fortunately, the alien girl was oblivious to it.

"Terra would not do that, Robin. You know that," Starfire added as if Cyborg's argument were not enough. Robin stewed in place at the mention of how he felt for Starfire, and eventually just let the matter drop.

"Regardless," Robin started again once he had a greater control of his emotional range, "they both broke out and they need to be put back into jail. Jinx should be easy enough to find, but it's Beast Boy I worry about. If he's not in Jump City, then where could he be?"

Terra shrugged, picked up her plate, and stood up to bring it over to the sink. When she stood up, though, a pocket of her shorts got caught on the corner of the counter and a carefully-folded piece of white paper fell out. She did not notice at first, but Robin did, and he walked over, picked it up, and unfolded it.

"Terra," Robin asked, "when did you get this?" He indicated the note that had fallen out of her pocket, which was the very same one that Beast Boy had left for her four days prior. She looked at what he was holding, slapped a hand on her pocket, and when she felt nothing there, sighed in defeat.

"Four days ago. It fell from my curtains when I woke up and pulled them. Now give it back, Robin," she ordered more than asked and plucked it from his hands.

"Beast Boy contacted you before he left."

"Robin!" Now Terra was more than a little miffed. "He said goodbye to me! That's all!"

"'Goodbye'? And where did he go after that?"

"I don't know! I was asleep!"

"The anchor said," Cyborg jumped in, "that he was a Steel City native. Not to mention that he said it a couple times himself. He's probably there."

"He made it across the country in four days?"

"He can turn into any animal, Robin," Terra reminded him. "Not that hard, I'd think. So are we going there to 'hunt him down' now?" She hated to use that phrase against Beast Boy, so she did put it in air quotes as she said it. Beast Boy could be any animal, but he was no animal himself. He never deserved to be caged, and she preferred that he was running free.

"Looks that way. Titans," Robin decided, "get to the T-Ship. We're heading to Steel City."


	5. Triplicity

Author's Note: Apologies for the delay in the new chapter. 

---

"Flight time, Cyborg?" Robin's voice crackled over the T-Ship's intercom system.

"3,000 miles?" Cyborg asked in confirmation. "She'll get us there in about six hours, unless you wanna punch it."

Terra debated vocalizing her worries while Starfire's voice asked something about why he would hit the ship, and she came to the resolution to do so. "How long will it take if we do?"

"Engines going full blast, Jump City to Steel City in three hours flat."

She opened her mouth to say "Let's do that", but Robin beat her do it. _"The sooner we get there, the better,"_ she thought instead.

"Hold on, y'all!" The thrusters flared as the T-Ship rose from the ground, then, after they shut off, with an exuberant shout from Cyborg, the main engines took over and launched the T-Ship into the east.

Terra (and, she was sure, the others) felt her body sharply sink into the seat. Cyborg was right to have said "hold on", she realized. _"I hope we're alive when we get there, though,"_ came her thought only half in jest. The sonic boom still ringing in her ears, she say back – as if there were any other way she could sit – and thought of Beast Boy, and wondered if he were all right.

"Attention, Teen Titans; this is Captain Cyborg speaking. We will be traveling at a constant speed of one thousand miles per hour, at an acceleration of zero to HECK YEAH! in point three seconds. The in-flight movie will be 'Coming to America' and can be seen by looking down or around you. Thank you for flying Air Cyborg; this is your captain saying—" he cleared his throat as he jammed his thumb against a button and sent the ship into full speed. "BOOYAH!"

Terra lurched back even further. _"I already know Cyborg's not all right,"_ she joked to herself to ease her mind. And it worked. Temporarily. After which, she just returned to worrying about Beast Boy, and whether Robin would fulfill his promise, and what Beast Boy would do to Robin, and what Robin would do to Beast Boy, and what she would do to Robin after whatever he did.

And what she wanted so much to do to Beast Boy.

-HG-

_What are you doing, girl? You can't have fallen in love with him! He and you knew each other for what, a day? Less! Love doesn't happen overnight! It takes time! Commitment!_

"_Oh, shut up!"_ Terra mentally yelled at whatever part of her was saying all those things about her and Beast Boy. _"Maybe I do love him! Maybe the time I spent fighting alongside him strengthened our relationship!"_

_Maybe the time you spent fighting against him weakened it_, the voice in her head responded coldly.

"_The fourteen days I spent crying for him mean something!"_ she countered herself and punched the air, hitting a button inconsequentially without realizing it.

_The fourteen hours you spent laughing with him mean nothing._

"_Shut UP!"_

_You only silence me because you know it's true._

"_It's a lie! I **do** love him!"_

_You don't!_

"_I DO!"_

_You don't love him and you never have!_ The voice was a hiss in her mind. She was surprised – no, terrified that she could even think in such a tone.

"SHUT UP! I love Beast Boy, and I always will!" she screamed in a voice of such undeniable finality that, were it not for the engines, the entire T-Ship would have heard it.

_Mission accomplished,_ the voice in her head said before slipping away.

"You _love_ him?" Raven and Robin asked over the intercom and with equal incredulity. Cyborg nodded to himself as if to say _I knew it all along_. Only Starfire expressed more than three words and a head gesture.

"I am so pleased to hear you confess your love for Beast Boy!" Even though Terra could not see her, she knew Starfire was positively beaming.

Starfire had said more, but Terra was still stunned from having the others hear her confession. She looked down at her control panel and found the intercom light glaring bright red. Ignoring the others' transmissions, she swore under her breath and practically sighed, "Later. Let's just…get there." She pressed the intercom button off again, rolled her eyes back, and tried to relax to the best of her ability.

-HG-

Beast Boy opened his eyes to find himself out of his glass cell and free from any physical bonds – not the state he wanted to be in, because using brute strength to tear apart shackles would have given him a much desired hit of adrenaline to get his heart racing, his blood pumping, and his manbeast form ready to tear the Brotherhood of Evil – specifically, the despicable _whore_ who had posed as Terra – a collective new one. He growled deeply.

"Show yourself," he ordered in a vicious voice to whomever could hear him. Any one of them would do; if she turned out not to show, he could force her location out of whichever one of them did. He stood there in the darkened warehouse alone, his ears twitching every so often with every drip of water or chitter of rat.

And then his ears rang and pounded with the sounds of engines landing outside the warehouse, the noise especially loud for him with all the attention he had been paying to every last detail of his environment. He knew there was no way he could trust his first reaction – why would they, of all people, unanimously agree to get him back, and why would they even care in the first place? – but for lack of a better explanation, he was left only to believe that the Teen Titans had in fact come all the way to Steel City, even though there was no way it was true.

Why would they have come? Well, he _had _broken out of jail. But wasn't Steel City out of their jurisdiction? And why all of them? After all, not all of them had wanted him to be locked up. And how had they figured out where he had gone? And why had it taken them so long?

Beast Boy's questions would have kept coming were it not for the very familiar, hate-inducing voice that came from the shadows just as the sound of the engines died.

"Beast Boy," the voice came from behind him. The green boy whipped around with a sneer on his face.

"Robin." He couldn't believe his former leader's gall. "Why the hell did you follow me? Did you come to finish the job?"

"I might have," the Boy Wonder shot back snippily.

"Where are the others?"

"They're at the ship, but I don't need them to finish what I started."

"You couldn't do it on your own last time," Beast Boy reminded with a barbed tone. "What makes you so sure you can do it on your own this time?"

Robin looked Beast Boy up and down, saw his torn uniform, and could practically feel the damage from earlier fights. "You're weak. I'm not. This'll be easy." Before allowing Beast Boy a chance to respond, Robin took out two birdarangs and pressed them together; through a mechanism of his own design they meshed to form the hilt of a sword, out of which the blade extended with a swishing noise. Holding the hilt in both hands, he charged towards Beast Boy with his sword cocked over his shoulder.

But Beast Boy was not as weak as he appeared; he was ready for Robin's attack. As the sword grew nearer, he dropped to the ground and transformed himself into the more difficult and much more deadly target of a yellow-skinned mamba snake. The move appeared to have caught Robin completely off-guard, since the sword came down through air and stopped prematurely before Robin knew where Beast Boy had disappeared to.

However, he found out soon enough. The slimy feel of a snake wrapping itself around his legs, binding them together and making him gradually lose his balance, was a very good indication of where Beast Boy had gone. He felt himself falling forward and jabbed the point of his sword into the planked floor of the warehouse, which stopped his fall but still left him vulnerable to the fangs of the snake. Even with the bonds on his legs, he still managed to kick free and deliver one steel-plated boot to Beast Boy's head. The kick shattered one of Beast Boy's fangs and, from the pain, he was forced to transform back.

"Titans! Go!" the same hate-inducing voice yelled into the warehouse from the front door.

Beast Boy was certain he was hallucinating; Robin's kick must have dealt more damage than he thought. There couldn't be two Robins any more than there could have been two of him, or two sets of the Teen Titans.

…But that was it, wasn't it? That _woman_ was playing mind games with him again. There was Robin, and there was her. Of course, it mattered little to him which one of them he wound up fighting in the end. He had enough problems with both of them that the end result would be the same either way.

While he was being pensive, the Titans swarmed into the warehouse to surround him. Terra stayed right next to Robin with hopes that, in the stand-down, she would be able to find time to convince him against imprisoning Beast Boy again. Starfire, too, stood next to Robin for similar reasons, and Raven and Cyborg respectively covered the areas to the left and the right of Beast Boy, effectively caging him against the back wall. Terra saw that Beast Boy was bleeding from the mouth and asked, "What happened?"

Beast Boy coughed and stained small parts of the floor red with a splatter. "Robin happened," he snarled and lunged towards the Robin standing beside Terra, but a well-placed wall of dark energy stopped him from moving any further.

"What do you mean, I happened, Beast Boy?" Robin asked with irritation rising in his voice. "We just got here."

"You don't see the boy I'm fighting?" Beast Boy asked. "You don't see the boy I tripped? The boy I was just about to kill before he brought up his foot and gave me this?" He pointed at his still-bleeding mouth and now it was clear that he was missing teeth. "The boy I'd like to get my revenge on? The _bastard_ I once idolized?.!" He was positively seething at this point. "You don't see yourself?"

"Only you can see him, Beast Boy," a third incarnation of the voice said from behind him. "But everyone can see me, and I'm sure you'll see that I can be just as bad as your little hallucination."

"What?" Robin asked in a whisper, almost to himself. Less at what Beast Boy had just said to him – he would have time to think that over after he sorted everything else out – than at the fact that standing directly across from him was an exact body double of himself. He moved his eyes as much as he could manage to see both Raven and Cyborg staring at Beast Boy, then the other Robin, then him, alternately.

"If none of you are going to do anything," the Robin clone said, "then I guess it's up to me. Titan! Go!" he screamed mockingly, but made no moves anywhere. Instead, he put on a very self-satisfied smirk and watched the Titans look on, still in disbelief.

It was only when Beast Boy flew into the air accompanied with a sickening crunch of bones in his jaw that Terra took control of the situation.

"GO!"


	6. Fear

"GO!" 

Terra's cry brought the Titans into a serious battle for the first time in too long. The team rushed forward, geomancer in the lead, towards the Robin double who had only just appeared. When the five passed Beast Boy's battered and still body lying on the wooden planks of the warehouse floor, Terra left the formation to fight whoever or whatever was impersonating Robin and knelt by Beast Boy's side. None of the others looked back to see where she had gone, and she would have preferred it that way anyway.

"Beast Boy!" she said in a half-whisper, then raised her voice again once she heard Robin yelling orders to the other Titans. "Are you okay?"

He looked at Terra with eyes that were at once both relieved and savage. "Of cou—" A cough broke his sentence. "Of course I'm not okay!" he continued. "But it doesn't matter. He looks like he's given up for now." He knew Terra could not see the Robin he meant, so he had to trust her to take his word for it. "But I'll be fine. This is my fight. You don't need to get involved." His voice brimmed with confidence though his form did not seem to show it.

Terra was almost convinced that he would survive, but still wanted to help in any way she could. What she wouldn't give right now for Raven's healing powers! But Raven, she saw, was very much occupied, as were the others. But…wait. Occupied with what? Terra definitely saw Starfire and Cyborg fighting the Robin clone, but why weren't Robin and Raven fighting with them? She couldn't see what either of them was contending with, just that they each were contending with _something_.

"What's the matter? Still confused?" a darkly familiar voice hissed. Terra shut her eyes and shouted several thoughts at the voice in her head, hoping to force it to go away as she had done earlier. "That won't work this time, girl," the voice said in that same tone. The blonde girl cautiously left Beast Boy's side to stand up and hesitantly turned around. She saw standing behind her…herself. Her clothing looked very different – it seemed to be made of tape and metal, both coloured a faded sort of blue and covering her entire body from neck to feet, and she had two square clamps of the same colour on either side of her head – but from the hair, body shape, and voice, she knew it was herself that she now looked at. The one thing she never knew could have belonged to her were those eyes: cold, calculating. Heartless.

"Surprised to see me in the flesh?" the duplicate continued. "I thought you would be. You never know what's going on, do you?" The original Terra, not wanting to believe that there was now a body to her verbal abuse, shook her head and shut her eyes tightly, trying to block it out. "You can't get rid of me, Terra. I've always been here, and I always will be. I'm the part of you you want out of your life, but you've never been brave enough to get rid of." The clone took a step towards Terra and kept talking, her voice getting harsher and harsher to Terra's ears. "Right now, you know you should be helping Beast Boy, but you're just sitting here listening to me. Look at him." She smiled with a distinct air of schadenfreude, relishing in Terra's pain of knowing that her double was right.

Terra looked away from herself just long enough to see Beast Boy suffer another crack to the jaw from an invisible assailant. Past him, she saw Raven and Robin, but nothing of either Cyborg or Starfire – not that she was paying much attention to anybody but Beast Boy in the first place. "Stop it," she whispered desperately when she turned back around to look at herself again. "Stop it."

"I can't stop it, little girl," the blue-clad Terra sneered. "Because I never started it. You did. The moment you walked into his life, you started everything that led to this. It's completely _your fault_."

Again Terra found herself screaming. "Shut **UP!**" She brought one arm up, tightened her hand into a fist, and swung at her impostor, who moved her shoulder back and evaded the punch easily. A second fist soon followed, but it was just as quickly and effortlessly dodged. Terra kept her attacks steady and gradually put more and more rage and strength into each punch, each consecutive miss only making her angrier.

Her double yawned. "I'm tired of you." She put out one blue-gloved hand and pushed Terra's forehead back, then balled her free hand into a fist and reared her arm back in preparation for delivering a savage blow to Terra's stomach. Terra knew it was coming and winced prematurely, but never stopped pumping her tired arms in futile attempts to hit her shadow.

But the debilitating punch never came.

-HG-

"Titans, go!" Robin yelled at himself, but before he and the other Titans could get to the duplicate of Robin, he yelled one word; it sounded like a name. Starfire and Cyborg kept barreling forward, but Robin saw Raven flinch, and it was not long before he heard a voice that made him stop in his tracks and retract his extended bo staff.

"Dick." The voice was deep and held special meaning for him, even in the one word it said. It was the voice of a man very close to him, a man without whom he would not be standing where he stood today. Robin turned around as soon as he heard the man behind him speak.

"What are you doing here?" Robin asked the man who had gotten significantly grayer since the two had last spoken.

"Dick, you disappoint me."

"What do you mean, I disappoint you? I've done my best ever since I joined the Titans!" Robin was bewildered that the man who stood several feet taller than he would ever figuratively look down on him.

"I doubt that." The man's voice was sincere. "If you really were doing your best, you'd have stopped this from happening."

"You think I could have fores—"

"I know you could have foreseen this, Dick. You could have foreseen this, and you could have prevented it." The man almost snarled. "But because you hesitated, your friends are suffering and there are supervillains threatening the country. You could have prevented both of those if you had only acted immediately, like I taught you."

"I acted as quickly as I could," Robin protested, but to no avail.

"You waited until information appeared on the news before you acted on anything. That is not what I taught you. I taught you to find all threats to the safety of your city and to act as soon as you found those threats. You disappoint me."

"That was a mistake, I'll admit," the Boy Wonder confessed, "but I didn't have a choice! I had to find out more about Slade than I did about a jailbreak!"

The man chuckled very slightly. "I will commend you for your devotion to a cause, but it stands that there was an immediate threat to the city that you didn't investigate. I bet you've already forgotten about Jinx and her accomplices in this whole fiasco with your friends and your teammates." Robin's eyes narrowed into a wince, which let the man know that he was right. "And now that the Titans are out of Jump City, who is defending it? Surely you knew better than to leave it undefended for any span of time." Again Robin flinched. "For all you know, the criminals could be running wild right now. And there's no one there to stop them."

Robin fell to his knees. The man was completely right. He'd been foolish enough to leave Jump City defenseless; he'd forgotten about the havoc that could be wrought by supposedly minor villains; he'd left spontaneously and had forgotten to plan…the list of what he had done that had gone against his training went on.

"You not only disappoint me," the man concluded his tirade, "Robin, you've failed me."

The Boy Wonder removed his own mask, knowing that he was no longer worthy of wearing it. His exposed eyes showed the pain of the man's last three words. "I'm sorry…Bruce."

No response.

"Bruce?"

-HG-

When Terra had knelt by Beast Boy's side, the Robin whom he had been fighting had relented his attack. However, as soon as Terra had left, Beast Boy's foe immediately sprung back into action without a single word of warning. The changeling barely had time to move to defend himself from Robin's handspring; Beast Boy narrowly avoided being kicked in the face with a steel-toed boot.

The way Robin landed, it appeared that Beast Boy would have some time to prepare an attack, but as Beast Boy, transformed into a tiger, pounced for Robin's exposed back, Robin extended his bo staff directly into Beast Boy's oversized nose, stunning him long enough for Robin to launch a birdarang around Beast Boy's body. When the birdarang clamped around the rope to secure itself, the two ends dug into the tiger's side and opened wounds that bled easily. Robin scoffed.

"You call yourself a Teen Titan? No Titan would fall for something like that."

Robin's taunt instilled Beast Boy with anger and, ignoring the pain, he transformed from a tiger to a lithe cheetah and escaped his binding with ease, then bared his claws and leapt again while Robin was busy taunting in an attempt to catch him off guard. Fortunately, his attempt worked and he managed to sink his tearing fangs deep into Robin's shoulder. The taste of his flesh was…nothing. There was no blood, no meat, nothing that would give him the satisfaction of actually attacking Robin to kill or maim. Robin didn't even appear to be injured.

"Surprise!" Robin jammed his elbow into Beast Boy's jaw again and followed up with a second bo staff hit to the same area. Beast Boy's teeth unlatched and he fell backwards as a human again, bleeding more severely from his mouth now and his strength very much failing him. But still he managed to stand up, apparently ready for even more.

"You still haven't learned, have you?" Robin asked. "I'm too strong for you."

"I don't care. We've got a score to settle," Beast Boy insisted. "I don't care if you're too strong. I'd rather die fighting you than live with you alive."

"Strong words from a little boy. Well, if you're ready for more, then—" Robin cut himself off and flung his bo staff at Beast Boy's head so quickly that it would more than likely fracture his skull if it connected. Beast Boy reached out to take it from the air and fling it back.

His hand clasped around nothing.

-HG-

Flash. A sea of fire.

Flash. A red demon.

Flash. Her friends. Gone.

The flashes ran through Raven's head as soon as Robin – or whoever it was they were fighting – had shouted the name "Phobia" upon being attacked. These visions…they couldn't be real. She knew it. But still, they struck her so vividly in her mind…

Flash. Terra. A statue, petrified for eternity.

No…no! She couldn't let those images take control of her.

Flash. Cyborg. Permanently deactivated.

The sight imprinted itself in her memory, but she forced herself to forget it and attempted to block it – and whatever was causing these flashes – out of her mind permanently. She muttered a familiar incantation and tried to fall into a meditative state so she could have greater control over her emotional range.

Flash. Starfire. Completely disemboweled, her organs everywhere.

She almost vomited at the reality of that image, but kept her meditation as steady as she could manage. And as she shut down her mind to outside invaders, she expanded her mind at the same time to try to find whatever was causing these images to appear. She felt telepathic waves coming from somewhere in the warehouse. Somewhere nearby. It would just take a few more…

Flash. Robin. Lying unmarked but very obviously dead in the hand of Trigon.

That shook her body to its very core. Her eyes snapped open and her meditation stopped immediately. But she knew where her target was. She levitated and brought herself around a stack of crates to find the source of her – and, she assumed, her friends' – agonies: A green-clad woman with her eyes closed, concentrating.

Raven decided that banter would wait; she had been put through far too much already, and being sarcastic was not on her list of priorities. Without a word, she telepathically flung one crate towards the woman to get her attention. Her eyes opened, but she was still clearly concentrating.

"Oh, it appears I've been found out. Too bad for you, little girl," the woman threatened and focused her glare on Raven's eyes.

The images no longer came in flashes; no, she was now seeing entire scenes. Trigon took Robin in his hands and instilled in him enough life to make him able to feel again. The gigantic red demon then grabbed one of Robin's arms in each hand and began pulling. And pulling. And pulling. Robin's scream rang through Raven's head long after she tried to block the influence, and even then the vision was still not completely gone. She heard the woman revel in her sinister ways, but the joyous cackle would not last for long. Raven screamed powerfully and toppled the entire wall of crates onto the woman with more energy than she ever recalled using in a single attack. And she didn't care whether or not the woman were killed by the falling objects; in fact, if she had it in her, she would have made sure that the woman was dead personally.

When the images finally faded from her mind, she knew that she was victorious.

-HG-

"Cyborg, why must we fight Robin alone?" Starfire asked a very occupied Cyborg between blasts of his sonic cannon. "Is this a plot of Slade? And what happened to the others?"

"I don't know who's messin' with us, Star," Cyborg responded quickly while dodging a flying kick from Robin, "but I know it's not Robin. He was with us the whole time. And Raven, Terra, and Robin look busy." He shot a glance over his shoulder, but could make out very little before Robin's foot came up out of the battle and connected with Cyborg's head, sending him spinning backwards.

"Then we still must fight?"

Even after righting himself, Cyborg still did not reply, instead opting to let another blue beam of sonic energy do the talking for him. Starfire assumed that to be a "yes" and attempted to call forth the necessary emotions to summon her Star Bolts, but found her hands not glowing with the familiar green energy of battle. "I fear it will not work, Cyborg."

"What's the matter, Star?" Robin took a break from fighting Starfire to ask her. "Can't fight your precious boyfr—" With a shot to the chest, though, Robin was knocked back by waves of sonic energy and could not complete his taunt.

"I'm tellin' you, Star, this isn't Robin." With their enemy temporarily incapacitated, Cyborg could take the time to look at Starfire. "And if you can't see that, then picture yourself fighting someone else. Someone it'd be easier to attack."

As soon as he said that, Starfire knew immediately whom she would rather be fighting instead of Robin, and her hands flared up and she let loose with a barrage of high-speed star bolts, only a few of which connected, but that was all she needed. Robin covered himself in his cape as defense, but it served little good; he was already weakened from the several sonic cannon attacks that he lost his grip on the cape and faced the star bolts full-force.

Still partially obscured by the fading smoke of the star bolt explosions, he reached for more smoke bombs in his belt so that he could escape, but found the pouch – and, from a cursory feel of the other pouches, the entire belt – completely empty. He swore and looked up to see Cyborg and Starfire joined by Terra, Raven, Beast Boy, and the original Robin.

He swore again.

"Those were all illusions," Raven said to the other three, who still looked very, very shaken up. "Of our greatest fears, from what I figured."

"I don't care what they were." Beast Boy snarled. "Let me at him."

"If you want me," the Robin clone said, "then come and get me." His bold threat's life was prolonged by the fact that he started changing as soon as he said it. The spiked hair of the Boy Wonder changed back into flowing black hair; the tacky combination of red, yellow, and green normalized into a blue that was anything but calm. The Boy Wonder's diminutive stature grew to that of a fully-grown man, and his form filled out into that of a mature woman.

"_You_." Beast Boy hissed the word.

"Plasmus! Mallah! Join me, and bring my rapier!" the woman who was once Robin shouted into the darkness. A blob of goo and a bipedal gorilla, the latter of whom was carrying a long and thin sword, joined the woman dressed in blue, who was now grinning evilly, from apparently out of nowhere.

Immediately as the trio assembled, Terra began barking orders frantically. "Robin! Raven! Get the monkey! Cyborg, Starfire, take the blob! Beast Boy, you and I can handle the shapesh—"

The other four Titans sprung into action when they heard their orders (though Robin looked very miffed by having his position as leader taken away), but one person protested.

"No," Beast Boy insisted.

"What?"

"You don't know what she did to me, Terra," he explained. "You don't know what she did to you, either. She's mine, and mine alone."

"At least let me be there for emotional supp—"

"_No_, Terra. Just…no. You don't…_no_. Fight with someone else. Don't fight with me. This is something she and I have to settle alone."

Terra looked at him with confusion but took his word for it, and left his side to join Cyborg and Starfire in fighting the strangely humanoid purple mass of ooze.

"_You_," Beast Boy repeated to the woman.

"Me," she confirmed sarcastically and dashed forward with her rapier at the ready.


	7. Blinding Justice

Beast Boy's mind filled with rage for the woman who was now approaching increasingly quickly, and though he was vaguely aware of the fact that other fights were going on, in his mind, there was only Madame Rouge. He made a point to transform before the woman got too close so that he would be prepared for any possible attack, and positioned his legs in a way that would give him what he thought would be the tactical advantage. Of course, the fact that he now weighed several hundred pounds more than his opponent helped matters a little.

Before Rouge could fully raise her arm in defense, a bear claw came down and pinned the arm, bringing the body with it, to the floor. Rouge struggled to raise her blade in her free hand, but Beast Boy was quick to still that as well. With his hot breath in her face, he was disappointed only for a second that it would be this easy, but was still all too glad to finally be able to finish th—

"Oof!" He made a quick noise at the unexpected attack. In his zeal, he had forgotten to immobilize Rouge's legs; she had just shoved a stiletto heel into his chest and, though she did not do enough damage to make him bleed more than superficially, it was more than enough to make him jerk back in surprise and inadvertently free Rouge from her position.

"I'm stronger than I look, _boy_," she warned to Beast Boy's deaf ears as she climbed back to her feet and leveled her blade at the now-human teen's head. With a glare in his eyes that seemed to say "_So am I_," he transformed into an immense gorilla and swung a truncheon fist at her head, but she had seen it coming from the windup and was able to dodge it almost too easily just by ducking her head.

The second fist, which she hadn't seen coming, cracked her in the back of the jaw, almost punching her throat. Her teeth clamped down suddenly on her tongue and she gagged disgustingly, staggering from the attack for which she had been unable to brace herself.

Beast Boy spat some blood that had been pooling in his mouth at Madame Rouge; it spattered at her feet. The scowl on his face implied that there would be more to come; he made another pass on Rouge's still stunned form. With the newfound speed of a cheetah, he pinned her underneath him easily in a single motion, a positively liquid coil-spring-pounce combined seamlessly together. Instead of swiping for her face or body as he would have wanted to, he bared his claws on her right forearm and squeezed. And squeezed. And squeezed.

Rouge screamed in pain as Beast Boy's claws dug into her arm and punctured the skin. She started bleeding and Beast Boy showed no signs of stopping; his claws had broken the skin several times over and were now tearing through the muscle in the layers below. A screech far louder than the first scream came as Rouge's hand spasmed and lost its grip on the rapier. Beast Boy knew that would be enough for his purposes; he wanted her as alive as possible before he dealt the last strike.

Rouge flattened her hand on her rapier's hilt in terror as Beast Boy lifted himself on his hind legs and shifted shape to the vicious and bloodthirsty wolf. Drooling hungrily, Beast Boy hesitated only a second to snap his jaws forward. Rouge rolled her upper body to the left, dragging her weapon roughly a quarter of the way through the roll before she lost what little grip she had on it in the first place.

Beast Boy flinched slightly before his jaws clamped shut on where Rouge's head had been. Rouge saw the flinch and looked at the tip of her weapon as best as she could manage; she saw that it now had an almost impossibly thin trickle of blood on it. She smiled maliciously; when she had rolled, she realized, her sword must have swept upwards and swiped him. It had not caused more than a scratch, but she knew that would be enough. More than enough. She began to chuckle quietly to herself.

Beast Boy lunged again, but more slowly this time; Rouge had more than enough time to dodge safely. Her chuckle grew louder. He attempted a third attack, but his strength gave way halfway through. Her chuckle escalated into full-on laughter as she, without Beast Boy's strength forcing her legs in place, kicked the changeling off, knocking him down, and shakily rose to her own feet. Though she was clutching her right arm above the elbow, the expression on her face showed no pain.

The changeling transformed back far more slowly than usual and stood up at an equally decreased speed. Where his leotard was ripped from removing himself from Slade's services, he noticed a small cut, not bleeding very much at all but still entirely there. "What the...hell did you do?" Beast Boy asked her with obvious strain.

Rouge's laughter broke almost immediately; it was almost as if she had been waiting for him to ask. "Phobia mentioned it." She took a careful step closer to him. "Mallah researched it." Another. "Plasmus harvested it." Step. "Houngan cultivated it." Closer. "I use it." She was almost face-to-face with him now, the only thing separating them height. "Ze Brotherhood's preferred weapon. One of ze most potent nerve toxins in ze world." Her already malicious smile dripped with sinful joy. "First it will slow you down to something zat seems like paralysis, but it will leave all your nerves intact." Her eyes met his as she bent down, and though he wanted to attack her, he could not move his hand at all.

"Zen a reagent zat Houngan and Mallah designed will be released – trust me; you will know when zat happens. Zat will last for only five minutes, but it will be ze most excruciating five minutes of your life." Her voice slowed down so she could relish each of her last six words; she practically licked her lips at how sweet her revenge tasted. Before continuing, she pressed the heel of her palm to Beast Boy's forehead and pushed him down to the wooden floor of the warehouse.

"When zat is over," she continued," zen you will be wishing for death. But it will not come so easily. You will be lying there on ze floor completely unable to move for several minutes, still able to feel _every last ounce_ of pain. You will be able to do nothing about it. And then, after time is up, you will finally die, and you will welcome death. Because where I will send you will seem like heaven after what I will put you through.

"Mallah and Houngan's reagent should be taking effect any minute now. Enjoy your last moments of peace, Beast Boy. And when you do die, tell your parents zat Madame Rouge says hello."

Beast Boy wanted to kill her. An eye for an eye; her life for his parents'. But he could not move a single muscle. He seethed; she was a coward! Hiding behind her tricks and her chemicals, only brave enough to say anything once he was no longer a threat! A coward!

His body raged with pain. He remembered the experience during his first fight with Rouge and could not even imagine how much greater the anguish, the torture was this time. He wanted to scream, to release some of the pain in a great primal howl, but he could not even open his jaw. Hopefully, he thought, he would eventually pass out and not be able to feel anything, but a full minute passed of him writhing on the floor and absolutely nothing happened. The ringing in his ears was too loud for him to be completely sure, but he thought he heard Rouge mocking him.

After a while – he had no concept of time any more – everything stopped. He finally blacked out. He heard an echoing voice scream his name. Not "Beast Boy". His real name.

"_**GARFIELD!"**_

It sounded like his mother.


	8. Epilogue

Beast Boy's body shook, though he was not the one doing it, and he only barely opened his eyes to see Terra retracting her hand and the other Titans standing around wherever he was.

"Garfield..." Terra's voice sounded sweeter than ever to Beast Boy's ears, even though she was obviously dying inside to see him like this. "Garfield, we..." She choked on her words and couldn't get through the sentence. Beast Boy knew what she was going to say anyway.

"We...can't save you," Raven confessed, finishing Terra's sentence for her.

"The only reason you're still alive right now is your genetics. Your nerve structure changes from animal to animal." Cyborg knew Beast Boy probably wouldn't be able to understand that, and he wished he could hear Beast Boy say "Uhm...what?" just once more, but Beast Boy could not speak.

"The toxin is too potent," Robin said. "By the time we made sure that Madame Rouge wouldn't get in the way of us trying to save you..." He let the sentence dangle. "I'm sorry, Beast Boy." Robin hung his head regretfully, almost in shame.

"But worry not, brave Beast Boy," Starfire began. "You have lived a warrior's life and you will have died a warrior's death. I honour you and X'Hal smiles upon you." She actually knelt down on one knee in respect for him. Upon rising, she continued, "And I pray that you meet an afterlife most fitting."

Terra's face was streaked with tears, though Beast Boy could not see. "Don't leave me, Garfield," she pleaded, desperate. "Don't go. Stay here."

Beast Boy focused his eyes on her and pushed three words from his lips with the greatest of effort. "Let...me...go." He wanted to say so much more, but he could barely form the thoughts, much less the words, in the quickly closing darkness.

Terra picked up Beast Boy's prone and fading body, hugged him tightly against her, and whispered, "I love you, Garfield."

He knew his time was all too short, but still he tried to say into her ear, "I...aagh..." His body went limp and his head fell over her shoulder. Terra felt his neck for a pulse, then closed her eyes and brought him even closer to her.

Starfire walked the few steps to where Terra was, knelt again on both legs, pressed her hands together, and said a short prayer in Tamaranean.  
_  
"Great X'Hal, this child of Earth has given his life in battle for the noblest of causes. Though he knows not of you, this plea is on behalf of one of your children. I beg you, gather his body and soul as one and, under your guidance, show him to his proper afterlife. Grant him peace in the hereafter. Amen."_

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Author's Note: Thanks for readingand reviewing. I intend to take a break from Teen Titans fanfiction for a while to focus on my Diablo II fic (which I have been neglecting), but perhaps if Season 5 strikes me with some ideas, I will return. In fact, I fully intend to.


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